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Feb 22

Spongebob Squarepants

While watching the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie clip in Monday’s class, I could not help but think of a contemporary children’s show that adults enjoy watching. I am speaking of Spongebob Squarepants. First aired in 1999 on Nickelodeon, Spongebob Squarepants has enjoyed mass success for the past thirteen years. While it was obviously marketed for children, it has been a very popular show for people of all ages. It has aired on both MTV and Spike TV, which are intended for more adult and young adult audiences. I still enjoy Spongebob on occasion, and I find jokes in old episodes that I did not understand enough to get when I watched the show at nine years old.  Of course, that is not a suprise, since the creator, Stephen Hillenburg, and a lot of the people behind the scenes were involved with Rocko’s Modern Life. Rocko’s Modern Life is an older Nickelodeon cartoon that is notorious for it’s provocative jokes that were geared towards the adult crowd. The clip I included is a short YouTube compilation of 10 more adult jokes in Spongebob Squarepants. Adult Jokes in Spongebob Squarepants. The compilation was put together by YouTube user maishah123 in January of 2010.  When I thought of Spigel’s “transgression of generational roles,” I thought of this show immediately. First of all, there is a large adult following of Spongebob. There is also adult content integrated into the writing.  There is even, at times, an adult figure in the show.  My association of Spongebob Squarepants with the ideas conveyed by Spigel helped me to grasp those ideas.

Feb 21

A Christmas Story

Growing up in a very typical American family, I was very used to the idea of tradition throughout my childhood. Of course, we had many different traditions that we practiced each year, but the ones I always looked forward to were the ones that fell right around the Christmas holidays.  One of the best parts of Christmas Eve was when my parents and my brother and I would gather around the TV to watch A Christmas Story before we all went to sleep. This movie has always been special to me, but I started thinking about it for a different reason after we watched the clip from Tom Corbett, Space Cadet in class.

A Christmas Story was a movie made in 1983 that showcased a typical 1940s middle-class family and their trials and tribulations they experience at Christmas time one year. This film stood out to me for two different reasons that pertained to our class after reading Spigel and watching the short clips in class on Monday. First of all, looking back and realizing how young I was when I started watching this movie was startling. There is definitely adult humor incorporated into the film, and there are also some parts that include curse words. However, the fact that this film is broadcasted on TBS for 24 hours straight on Christmas Eve and Christmas day makes me think I was not the only child being entertained by this movie during the holiday season.

The second reason I thought of A Christmas Story while watching the short clips is because there is a very similar scene to the one in Tom Corbett, Space Cadet where he is plainly advertising Kraft Dairy Fresh Caramels. The scene in A Christmas Story shows the main character getting very excited about receiving his Little Orphan Annie Decoder Pen to decode a message at the end of the radio show. He ends up being disappointed when the message is “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” This is another example of the very direct advertising technique used during the 1940s and 1950s. The product placement would have directly appealed to the younger generation since Ovaltine in primarily drank by younger children.

Feb 15

Beanie Babies

When I was three years old my mom got me Lucky the Ladybug, my first Beanie Baby.  Lucky quickly became one of my favorite toys and after receiving her I wanted all of the Beanie Babies.  Back when I was growing up I would spend hours playing with my stuffed animals.  For some reason they were more appealing to me then regular dolls.  I suppose since they were animals it allowed me to use my imagination more.  Beanie Babies were a huge deal for me and for many other kids when I was in elementary school.  Beanie Babies were stuffed animals made by Ty Warner Inc. in 1993 with only nine different animals at the time and they eventually became extremely popular in the late nineties. There were several different animals and styles that you could collect and I wanted all of them.  The more Beanie Babies I had, the more crazy and exciting adventures we could go on.  Many parents got their kids Beanie Babies so they could collect them and have them be worth something someday, and many limited collections are very valuable.  Some rare collections can go from hundreds to even thousands of dollars in certain markets.  I, personally, wanted the stuffed animals with the sole intent of playing with them.  Their bright colors and individualized name tags were very appealing to kids because they all seemed to have their very own personality.   Beanie Babies were definitely a very popular childhood item, which relates to the reading by Stearns and Cross.  They state that “an array of new consumer products was aimed at children” (Stearns 3).  These stuffed animals were directly aimed at kid’s imaginations.  They also were not necessarily gender specified like dolls; boys and girls could both collect the stuffed animals without feeling pressure from friends or their parents for collecting them.

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Feb 15

In SOPA/PIPA debate, Paramount seeks out young allies

After the widespread reactions against the anti-piracy initiatives SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), supporter of the bills, Paramount, directed its efforts towards educating the educated by reaching out to universities with prominent law schools in a letter sent out earlier this month. Paramount hopes to address the issue of “content theft, its challenges, and possible ways to address it” either in a “formal presentation followed by an open discussion period or to participate in a class session”.
The author of the article, “Paramount Wants To Talk To Students About How They’re All Thieves & Then Ask For Ideas On What To Do” and its follow up “More Details About Paramount’s Offer To Law Schools To Teach Them About The Evils Of ‘Content Theft'”, Mike Masnick, interprets the effort as a way of convincing “the next generation of lawyers to come help them try to cripple the internet”  and further spreading the moral panic phrase of “content theft” by presenting the destructive effects of copyright infringement.

Many websites participated in the strike against SOPA and PIPA. Bills that are supported by companies like Paramount Pictures.

This seems fairly similar to the discussion over the moral panics caused by comic books in the 1950s. The “defendants” in both cases have had to defend freedoms and their right to expression -be it through horror/crime comics or through a video mashup of “The Fighter” and “Mark Wahlberg talks to animals”. In either case, it appears that those who have been rallying against the methods of expression have had intimidation on their side -either threatening with jail time, fines, or shutting down the hosts- to further their cause. Hopefully this time, there aren’t as many casualties.

Feb 15

Pog Panic

 

POG matches played on school playgrounds during the 90s often resembled gambling.

During the early 1990s a game emerged from Hawaii that would, like a Hurricane, take the nation’s youth by storm. From coast to coast, children of the 90s were playing “Pog”—a simple, bizarrely popular game that was traditionally played with milk bottle caps. The caps were originally made of cardboard and stapled shut onto the lids of the containers. Hawaiian children would collect these caps, stack them, and take turns throwing a heavier cap to slam on top of the stack. Overturned caps were counted as points, thus, the object of the game was to flip over as many caps as possible. When the stack was depleted, whoever retained the most caps was proclaimed the winner.

In 1993 Alan Rypinski turned the idea into a multi-million dollar business venture known as the World Pog Federation. Pogs were so common that the Federation’s lawyers compared the legal battle for the Pogs trademark similar to the ones endured by Coke, Kleen-ex, and Q-tip. With many imitators vieing for the “Milk Cap” market, World Pog reached marketing agreements with major companies like Warner Bros. to differentiate their product. According to the New York times, “A packet of caps cost a quarter and up, while collectibles could run as high as several dollars.” It was only a matter of time before this value system translated to the school playground, creating problems within grade schools across the nation.

More often than not, the game was played primarily for fun and all caps were returned to their rightful owners as the match came to an end. Though, to some, playing for fun was not enough to elicit the feeling of true excitement (or competition). When children discovered the exchange value for highly sought after Pogs, a moral panic struck a nerve in the elementary educational system across America. More and more children were playing for “keepsies” on the playground. Adding to the already violent motion of “slamming” plastic and metal objects onto concrete, children who did not adhere to the rules, or who were not accustomed to losing often, would duke it out to reclaim their prescious Pogs. Due to the violence and resemblance to gambling, parents and school administrators saw the game as a threat to the moral interests of their children. As a result, Pogs were banned indefinitely from schools and the trending game quickly died out shortly thereafter.  

 

Feb 15

La Belle Diaperina

In Glad Rags to Riches, Shirley Temple plays La Belle Diaperina. Diaperina is a showgirl in a night club that is stuck in a life she despises. The club owner wants Temple for himself, forcing her to perform until she marries him. She refuses and wishes that her sweetheart would save her. Her sweetheart, Elmer, just so happens to stumble into the poster for her act and realizes that he may have finally found his love. They find each other in the club during a very can-can like dance number, upsetting her boss. He kicks Elmer out of the club, but only until he comes crashing back in with police to arrest the horrible club owner. Diaperina and Elmer share a celebratory smooch and leave hand in hand to the Wedding March.

There are so many different things that toe the line “between innocence and flirtatiousness.” Temples character is burlesque dancer, in the first scene she is wearing a top hat and shiny black top/diaper. Immediately after her performance it pans to a boy clapping enthusiastically. Her boss is creepy, especially since he is played by a child, and in the final scenes is shown trying to force a kiss on Temple as she tries to get away.

I understand completely the idea behind the Baby Burlesks, it is funny to see kids imitate adults. This was something I still love in appropriate settings such as Little Rascalls. But Riches crosses the line, these are four year olds! Even if the child “goes through the motions of adult characters without…comprehending anything”(Kasson, 197), what does it say about the adults watching? Just because they don’t understand, we do.

Feb 15

Kiddin’ Hollywood

The “Baby Burlesk” I chose was called “Kiddin’ Hollywood”, which is a play on words meant to represent both the actuality of the film (kids acting in Hollywood) as well as the critique of Hollywood’s fickleness which is the short’s underlying theme. In the film, a beauty pageant winner named Morelegs Sweetrick is rejected during a casting call for a Hollywood movie. She instead finds work scrubbing the floors around the stage. Her big chance appears when the prissy, diva of a leading female in the film- Freta Snobbo- refuses to come on the set. Morelegs lands the role, and impresses her castmates and director with her performance. Fame gets to her head too quickly though, and after wrapping up filming she rejects the advances of her budding costar in search of a “Rolls Royce and a maid”. She went from being a humble floor cleaner to Freta Snobbo herself. The movie, however, is a complete bust, and Sweetrick finds her aspiring film career grounded prior to takeoff. While wallowing in her own failure, her previously rejected costar returns for her, confesses his enduring love, and takes her hand in marriage.

The film does not satirize a prior work, rather instead choosing to satirize individual prominent figures in Hollywood at the time. Freta Snobbo is meant to represent actress Greta Garbo, who was renown at the time as being an odd figure, who frequently caused problems on movie sets because of her disdain for crowds and preference for being constantly alone. This made her come off as “snobbish”, hence the joke. Morelegs Sweetrick is meant to satirize actress Marlene Dietrich, who was known to pursue roles with an unheard of ferocity. If there was a role she desired, she would do everything in her power to get it.

This particular burlesque is a prime example of what John Kasson mentions in his text “Behind Shirley Temple’s Smile”: 

“Shirley Temple’s early roles were perched ambiguously on the cusp between innocence and flirtatiousness.” (course packet, page 197).

The attire that Temple dons as “Morelegs Sweetrick” is meant to simulate that of a high class mistress. The name “Morelegs” is a reference to Temple’s legs, which is very inappropriate when used to refer to a child but would be much more common if used to refer to a woman of questionable morals in an adult film. The word “trick” is often used to describe sexual favors performed by a prostitute, and in combination with the word “sweet” the name as a whole was meant to be highly suggestive and an inside joke among adults. There is also the matter of the kiss; a long passionate kiss that, while appearing innocent between children, would be much considered much more risque among an older crowd. Finally, there is the matter of Sweetrick becoming a materialistic girl interested in the fancy things in life. This is evident when she flirts with her director after the closing of the film because in him she sees the possibility of a “Rolls Royce and a maid”. Love for money, a concept that is very adult.

 

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